


Perennial

by brightloveee



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Eventual Michael/Maria (but not a lot), F/M, M/M, Malex Time Travel AU, NOT the Time Traveler's Wife don't get it twisted, Time Travel AU, We are nice to Maria here, s1 canon compliant if you would believe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-03 18:33:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20457569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightloveee/pseuds/brightloveee
Summary: Sometimes Michael gets to see Alex in the future, and sometimes he sees him in the past. It’s the only thing that gets him through the present.Or, unidentified time travel device saves Michael Guerin’s life.OR, the surprisingly-canon-compliant Time Travel Fic that didn’t try to get so angsty but did anyway.





	Perennial

Michael didn’t like to go back in time, he only liked to go forward.

The machine wouldn’t let him go back before he was seven years old. He’d tried as many times as he could take.

He’d found a sphere among the other ship remains years ago, glimmering just the same as all the other debris when he touched it, but it had taken ages of tinkering with it before figuring anything out. Whatever he had figured out was imprecise and confusing.

It was big and round and heavy. Like a bowling ball that lit up under his fingertips. At first, he’d wondered whether it was a globe of their alien planet, but it was just cloudy and glittery and he couldn’t make out any sort of map. He wondered if it showed images like a crystal ball, or projected them outward, but it had never done either. He wondered if it was some sort of steering device but it didn’t fit into the console he’d reconstructed. Eventually, he figured it must either be some frou-frou decorative item or have something hidden inside it. 

The first time it happened, it was an accident. He’d gotten so desperate to solve the mystery of it that he’d taken a screwdriver to the thing late one night. There may have been a significant amount of bourbon and acetone involved in that decision. He’d had his bad hand spread over one side, trying to keep it from rolling off the table, as he tried to pry at any small crevice with the flathead when – _wham – _everything whited out.

He’d opened his eyes in a dark bedroom.

It was warm and quiet. Michael found himself laying on a bed that was actually pretty comfy. There was a fluffy duvet covering him. He rolled his head around, the pillow was firm and thick. So, definitely not the airstream with its tiny, rickety bed and thin, scratchy blanket.

Disoriented, Michael wondered how long he’d been asleep, or how he got here.

There was the sound of static coming from the other side of the bed. The sheets were rumpled as if someone had just been there. Michael rolled over and reached out his hand. The blankets still had a hint of warmth on them. Michael momentarily speculated how drunk he must have been to hook up with the person who lived here and then actually fall asleep. He had a rule about that.

He cast around. He was wearing a pair of briefs felt nicer than any he owned himself so he must’ve snagged those along the way. Funny, he didn’t feel drunk or shitty or hungover. The fact remained, he needed to get out of this situation as quickly as possible. He started to get up.

It was then that a noise stopped him entirely. There was muffled static coming from a little white speaker box on the nightstand. It crackled like a walkie-talkie Michael’d had as a kid. Through it, Michael heard a soft voice that made his stomach drop.

It was that voice. Singing so softly and gently through the static. Michael had imagined that voice thousands of times in the past eight years. Had once heard little hummed tunes in the back of a toolshed. Had heard it whisper and whimper and whine. He’d know it anywhere.

“_If that diamond ring turns brass…_” Michael felt a thump behind his ribs. He grabbed the monitor from the nightstand and held it to his ear. “_Shhhh...Daddy’s gonna buy you a looking glass…”_

Through the swell of static, there was a little coo on the other end, just a tiny little mewl, that tore at Michael. 

“_Shhh…_” Alex’s voice came so gently, so sweetly, Michael felt it all the way to his bones. “_Shhhh, sweetpea…_”

Michael clutched the monitor to his chest. Tears he’d held at bay for long years pricked at the corners of his eyes. He screwed them shut and let himself get swept away with the tide of Alex’s soft hushing.

“_Shhhh…_” Alex soothed. 

When Michael opened his eyes again, he was back in the makeshift bunker underneath the airstream, on the grubby dirt floor, clutching the big glowing marble to his chest where the little baby monitor had been a moment ago.

He threw it across the room.

Alex wasn’t there. He never had been. It was an illusion.

Michael didn’t have a home like that. 

Alex was still at war.

Michael was still alone.

Michael had felt the loss as keenly as the first time he’d watched Alex turn his back and walk away.

\--

Michael didn’t touch the giant marble again for more than six months.

He did fix up an old stereo enough to play some radio channels with intermittent static while he slept.

He’d wake from hazy dreams and just for a second, one split second, he’d think he was back in that warm bedroom with that soft voice.

He’d open his eyes to his cold, shabby trailer.

Nothing felt so cruel.

He hadn’t heard news of Alex in months and didn’t even have anyone to ask anyways.

He’d go to the Pony, and listen to Maria talk, and hope.

Four times, in the eight years since Alex had left, Michael had eavesdropped when Maria brought up Alex.

The first time, Maria had been telling a tourist about her friend who had just graduated from the Air Force Academy with a major in computer science and a focus on codebreaking, while Michael, a few seats down the bar, hung on to every word.

The next, more than a year after, when Alex had enlisted and was preparing to be deployed to the Middle East. Michael listened to Maria fret for half an hour and clutched his glass tightly. He thought about Alex’s smile, his warm brown eyes and sharp wit, the guitar he’d given Michael, the way his hands were careful never to hurt him. He couldn’t picture that boy surrounded by war and fear. Taking someone’s life. Maybe having his own life taken. 

Several months later, Maria came in excited, telling anyone who would listen that her Air Force friend came back from his deployment, and he was out on leave and coming home that day. The next day, Michael drove his truck across town, parked it blocks away and practically ran the rest of the way to the Manes house. He waited around the backside of the toolshed for hours. Alex never came out.

The last time he got any news of Alex, a couple of years after that, Maria was telling her mother that Alex was talking about going out on another deployment. He’d been by Roswell on leave again. Michael hadn’t gone to see him that time.

After that, Michael had stopped listening. He’d hear the name _Alex Manes_ and bury it deep at the bottom of a glass, or in the ball of his fist, or in a stranger’s embrace. It didn’t erase him. But just for a minute, it might dull the sting.

For years, he hadn’t listened. He’d turned his head from Maria’s every mention of him.

But after that night in that strange dark bedroom, he listened for every word again. Went to the Wild Pony every night, sat at the bar and waited. Now, when he wanted it most, no word came.

Spring and summer had passed since he’d last touched the orb that had shown him that vision. It had sat, growing dusty, in the corner where he’d thrown it.

Michael watched it sometimes, feeling a pull towards it. Letting it call to him.

As much as it did, he didn’t know if he could bear to hear Alex’s voice so sweetly, so gently, then lose it again. He didn’t know if it was weakness or fear that kept him from it.

But he didn’t touch it.

Until the day he thought he’d lost that voice for good.

**Author's Note:**

> UPDATE 9/8/19: changed title from "If That Mockingbird Won't Sing" to "Perennial" in case anybody is confused! I'm all about that re-brand u kno.
> 
> My first contribution to RNM/Malex fandom and I am SO excited!


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